PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
Getting Started in Adobe Lightroom GUEST COLUMNIST: STEVE BARRY
WHEN IT COMES TO DIGITAL PHOTO EDITING, products from Adobe have been the standard. Photoshop®
millions of photographers from hobbyists to professionals. But now, many are turning to Lightroom®
as their primary editing tool.
Why? Its logical layout for processing is one big reason; another reason is its powerful digital file management. If you use a digital camera, chances are
you have better than basic computer skills. While professional grade image software can be intimidating, you’ll find that spending an evening or two will get you pretty comfortable with the fundamental steps of importing and processing your images. So how does one get started in Lightroom?
We’ll create a catalog, import some images, and do our first photo edit. The first thing to do, however, is download Lightroom from the Adobe website (
www.adobe.com). Lightroom is part of Adobe’s “Creative Cloud” products, but don’t let the name throw you — the software and all your files reside on your computer, just like any other software. The difference is Lightroom is a subscription, and it’s an excellent value. For $10 a month, you get both Lightroom and Photoshop. The only thing “cloud” about Creative Cloud is your computer occasionally communicates with the Adobe mother ship to make sure you’re up-to-date with your subscription payment. So you have Lightroom downloaded and ready to go. What next? Here’s where a little
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preparation can go a long way. Using your computer’s desktop, organize your photos in some logical way. In this case, easier is better — you can use keywords for detailed sorting and searching later. For now, something easy like chronological order is best. I organize my photos in a folder heirarchy that goes PHOTOS > YEAR > MONTH > DAY. To make things easier to get started, put your primary folder where you’ll want it to permanently live; this can be an external drive if you want.
First Steps: Catalog and Import Photos Okay, let’s open Lightroom. You’ll be asked
to create a new catalog. Some people make multiple catalogs for each major photographic aspect of their lives such as “family,” “trains,” “national parks,” and the like. After messing with multiple catalogs, I decided to finally settle on one catalog for everything. With more than 200,000 images in my collection, I see no visible performance issues by having a single catalog. Create a catalog and give it a name. You can always combine catalogs later, and you can also break out segments of a catalog into a new catalog should you change your mind on how you want things organized. Keep in mind that you can only have one catalog open at a time, so if you want to search across a wide selection of photos it’s best to have everything in one place. Across the top you’ll see the primary modules — Library, Develop, Map, and more. Today, we’re just going to worry about the
first two. Click on the Library module. Down in the lower left you’ll see two
options — Import and Export. We’ll select Import, which will bring up a pop-up screen that displays your computer’s file system on the left side, just like your desktop. Select the top level folder that you want to import, and in the menu across the top select Add (vs. Move or the other options). Go to the lower right and click Import. This will bring your photos into Lightroom and display them in a grid (see the screenshot on the next page). If you later add photos to a folder that
has already been imported and you want to import the new files, just click on the folder; it will import only the new images. Once imported, let’s head back to the
Library module (across the top). Clicking on any photo in the grid will replace the grid with a large version of that photo. You can further zoom in by clicking on the photo; clicking again returns you to the original size. Clicking the grid icon near the bottom left will take you back to grid view. A filmstrip view runs across the bottom of your screen.
Processing Images in Lightroom Okay, now let’s process something. The
big advantage Lightroom has over Photoshop is all the tools are located in a logical order. Select a photo while you are in the Library module, then go up top and change to the Develop module; your developing tools will appear on the right (see screenshot above).
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